


A Billion Million Miles

by cardinalwrites



Category: SPN, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Destiel - Freeform, Friends to Lovers, It's teen 'cause there might be language, M/M, Movie AU, space between us, this is written in a think aloud but I might add to it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-06 22:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11045991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinalwrites/pseuds/cardinalwrites
Summary: In a world that's chosen for you and is a million billion miles from the only friend you have, some things you just have to take into your own hands.For Castiel, that meant finding a way to Earth from Mars, the place he was born.





	1. A Long Time Ago...

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched The Space Between Us and automatically needed to get this idea out, even if it's just in thinking aloud written outline that'll just turn into something that'll probably be really long. This is being crossposted on Tumblr as well, but I know people (myself included) like having something in just one place.
> 
> But I hope you enjoy.

It’s 2025 and the first mission to live on Mars is about to take place. The brains behind the entire operation is presenting the world to the brave astronauts that will spend the next 4 years of their lives to scientific advancement on an entire different damn planet; their home being named Elysium, or just “West Pontiac” because that’s where the head astronaut and leader of the operation, Anna Milton, is from.

It takes roughly 7 months to get from Earth to Mars at this point, and so after the final preparations were made and the astronauts could say goodbye to their families and loved ones, it was time to head to the stars. And so Anna and her crew of six other guys did.

1 month in, they were docked aboard the massive space cruiser and living comfortably as they sped to Mars. Anna was teaching Gabriel and Balthazar how to fly and do manual overrides. Balthazar was a doctor and Gabriel a prankster, thus they needed the help.

2 months in, Anna was starting to get dizzy and light headed. It was a potential side effect, nothing she should be worried about.

3 months in Balthazar did a scan. Anna was pregnant. What do they do? They’re on a damn ship for crying out loud and now there’s a baby literally on board?

They call NASA and talk to the brain child and founder of the entire project and the resident doctor there on site, Michael. Do they tell the press? That would mean imminent loss of funding. Do they stop the entire emission? They don’t even know if the baby will make it back to Earth in one piece.

“Have them continue,” is all Michael says, much to the objection of the founder. 

“You’re subjecting a child to an entire period of incubation in space! That’s unheard of!” the founder cries.

“This would mean an in depth look at whether or not life can be sustained there,” Michael counters. “It’s the only option.” The founder isn’t happy. He wants the team to come home, to see the baby.

“I’m going up there,” he declares. “The next mission out, I’m going to help.” But he can’t. The founder has a medical issue that is untested in space. He could very well die, and they can’t have a founder die.

Thus, Michael takes action. The baby and Anna stay on board and the mission continues. The founder begins to shrink into himself at the thought of condemning a child he doesn’t know to a life he didn’t ask for. And yes, the baby was a boy.

7 months pass and the mission makes it to Mars all intact. By then Anna is very much a swollen bomb ready to give at any second, but thankfully the base had a state of the art medical room and there wasn’t the pesky issue of gravity to deal with, artificial gravity having already been a solved issue long ago thanks to the Founder and his crazy ideas. A little while later her water breaks on the red planet. The baby was coming.

It was a labored birth, more so since it was Anna’s first child. The other men worked around the clock to keep her ready and stable, Balthazar taking the lead as the medical staff while the other scientists worked to bring a child into this brave new world. Anna was a trouper, the leader she was born to be. The baby was born, it would turn out to be her only one. She held him in her arms before she began to seize, flatlining despite the team’s best efforts.

The beautiful baby was now an orphan for better lack of the word, the first child of Mars to call home.

“What should we name him?” Gabriel had asked. Anna had thought of a list on the way over, but she never told them what name she had decided. There was one name that everyone had liked, however, one that fit. It was a Thursday at NASA back home.

“Castiel,” Gabriel breathes, “His name will be Castiel.”


	2. Contact

16 years pass. 16 whole years, and Castiel Milton is now a teenager living very much in a bubble on the face of the Red Planet, the very first human Martian and still the only one. The missions had been successful, thus more and more scientists began coming until it was a small colony of roughly 35 people living in spurts of anywhere between 4-6 years at once before they went back. All except Castiel, that is. No one knew he existed back on Earth. NASA had kept everything under wraps. The Founder – Chuck Shurley – all but became a recluse when Anna died, but Castiel still learned about him through his nervous ticks and the speeches the base kept on archive. He knew Chuck’s words by heart, having gone through them on more than one occasion while he’s hacked into the base’s servers when looking for things. Chuck was everywhere. 

They took Anna’s body back to Earth to spread her ashes. Castiel never got the chance to know her, but he had been raised by scientists and doctors who did. There was one that they sent up to take care of him, a woman named Jody that didn’t have children of her own, or at least, not anymore. Everyone carried Anna in the highest regard, even if the main crew that was there at the start is no longer there. Her things were kept in the original wing that is now just storage, Castiel’s birthplace kept the way it was that night and converted into a multi-faceted medical ward. He was able to hack his way through enough to at least find her files, though, the ones that she kept private from her crew. A quick other hack into the main frame and bypassing Mr. Shurley’s face again and Castiel had the filtration map as well, the perfect way to get around.

He did end up finding Anna’s things, quickly coming back to his room and refuge of 16 years to survey them in secret–pictures of water in big quantities unlike anything they had on Mars, trinkets and heirlooms that Anna brought with her, and then pictures and videos, one of which that sported Anna and another man who was the spitting image of Castiel.

Castiel regarded the picture. It was of Anna and the man at what Castiel’s database of information could only supply as a beach on Earth. They looked happy, both of them smiling wide in the picture. The man carried the same raven brown hair and blue eyes that he had–It had to be his father. 16 years of his life, he did not know who his father was. No one had because Anna had never mentioned being married, yet here it was. His father was on earth, one billion million miles away.

But then again, so was the only other face he knew, and speak of the devil, he called Cas a few minutes after Castiel had begun to stare at the picture.

Castiel scrambled to pull together the makeshift set he’d fabricated, the hatch that was his room’s door being hidden as he angled the computer camera to where his bedroom looked somewhat decently normal, or rather, what Castiel assumed to be a normal high schooler’s room. He never had to go to high school, he already worked on arguably the biggest scientific feat this side of the millennia.

He clicked on the call that now took up his screen, a video conversation unlike the relics that Skype had 25 years before. This was broadcasted full HD and used satellites with thousands upon thousands more power than in the past, which helped when you were trying to call someone that lived on another planet and didn’t have to worry about the wifi or phone surcharge.

“Heya, Cas,” a voice greeted him on the other end, his background being the school from where Castiel knew he was calling.

“Hello, Dean.”


	3. Initial Checks

So, how did they meet? Well, isn’t that the question. Castiel had learned a lot about Dean in the last few years ever since they communicated through an online chat three years ago, Dean having searched out for a science tutor on a local forum Castiel frequented. From there, Dean never failed his science class and Castiel earned a friend out there in the universe. It started out bumpy, Dean asking why Castiel couldn’t just come over one day after school to help physically or Castiel accidentally calling him in the middle of the night because he got the time difference wrong, and that’s not to mention Castiel having absolutely zero idea about how to interact with someone that wasn’t a thirty-fifty year old scientist or botanist on a space station. The first thing he had asked Dean during that fateful first meeting was what color his eyes were, green not exactly being something that Castiel saw much of here outside the plant nursery. He never thought people carried that color within them.

“You’re weird, man,” Dean had responded, a smile on his face, but like that the ice had broken.

But as schedules for Dean changed with school and what he had going on, they had fallen into an easy break of Dean calling and them talking whenever Dean was in his computer class, the science classes of old long since gone now as Dean entered his junior year of high school. Castiel never told him the truth, or rather, all of the truth. He told Dean he was sick and couldn’t leave his house in New York, a far enough way from Lawrence where Dean was that made the excuse believable. Besides, Dean wouldn’t be able to fly to New York, not with him having to take care of his little brother alone.

Castiel learned a lot about Dean, especially whenever Dean logged on from someplace new. When they had first met, Dean had been in Texas, then Colorado, and then finally in Kansas where he now stood. The foster care system shipped them around from time to time, but they were living with a woman named Missouri that Dean thinks will stay that way until he can age out next year. That is almost always the main point of conversation, Dean’s constant hate at the world for putting his brother (and him) in the situation that they’re in. Castiel always tells him that he can relate, but Dean always assumes it’s because he is stuck inside in New York instead of what’s actually going on.

For the record, Castiel _is_ sick. Mars has 2/3rds less gravity than Earth, which makes growing up with questionable organs a massive issue that many of the scientists on West Pontiac monitored like hawks. Castiel had a metal chest implant that monitored everything, but it was his bones that posed the biggest concern. They were simply just very fragile because of the place he was born into. Nothing more, though Jody still makes him drink as many vitamin and mineral supplements as the base can provide.

Cas does share a few things, however, like the fact that he doesn’t know his dad or that he wishes he could see the ocean, how he’s feeling or what he’s read. He doesn’t tell Dean about the mountains on Mars or the fact that there’s a plaque near one of the craters with Anna’s name and rank on it in memorial. He doesn’t tell Dean about riding out there and nearly killing himself once after he flipped the speed cruiser he was piloting and it grazed his suit, oxygen escaping into the expanse of the world around him until Jody had come to his rescue. These are their usual conversations now, the high school tutoring nothing but a memory. Whenever Dean’s period ends, he always signs off the same way.

“Catch you later,” a wave, a click, and then Castiel finds himself staring back at a blank screen, his own wave and smile staring back at him. How he longed to be on Earth, to be on a planet and see what everyone else does, feel the sun on his skin without it being protected by a suit, to breathe freely and to swim in the ocean. All of Anna’s videos showed that, either the trees of a rainforest, the wind scraping a few leaves together into harmless cyclones on the ground, and the roaring ocean, Anna running along with his father, laughing, smiling, alive. 

How Castiel wished he could be alive like that. He told Jody that a lot, but it wasn’t until a few months later that anything changed up on West Pontiac. 

Jody had told him the news after she had caught Castiel with his mother’s things that he should not have. She had gone and called NASA headquarters and told them about how well he had been doing, all of his tests coming back strong and his exercise daily. She told Michael and the board that was there in Chuck’s place that she thought Castiel could now make it home even if all of the concerns were still unsure.

Michael had to call the founder, because even though he checked out he still had authority in the place. To bring Castiel back would be to reveal the secret that he was alive in the first place, but it would mean bringing them home after they had made sure he was stable and capable of doing so. They could run tests and see his physiology for what it was. It was all a logical plan, even if Jody objected to the PR of it all. She just wanted to bring Cas home, not have him be made into some sort of publicity stunt.

When Chuck found out about it, irate was not a word that even began to describe him. He flew all the way from his home to Florida just to give Michael a piece of his mind on the matter and tell him that Castiel could not survive on Earth. There were just too many variables. He would not give his blessing.

To all this, Michael simply responded that this was not him asking, this was him telling.

“In a few months time, Castiel will be coming home,” Micheal’s voice was final.


	4. Final Countdown

“Castiel is coming home,” Michael had said on the ground. The Founder had been distraught. Jody had been cautiously optimistic.

But for Cas, for Cas it was as if the world had just opened up, quite literally.

In a few months it would become a possible reality, but only if Cas worked for it. His body was still too fragile if he were to go now, his bones worst of all. Over the course of those interim months, Castiel underwent surgery that implanted reinforcement mesh around his bones to help him walk upright without breaking his bones severely. Training became a daily occurrence, more often than not resulting in Jody and he in the gym and track field for four or five hours out of a given earth day cycle. Castiel knew how to run on a planet with the gravity he grew up un, but Jody told him it would feel infinitely different on Earth, not that he would ever be running, but it was the principle of the thing. Castiel would go back to his room exhausted every night, but he did so with the knowledge that he was one step closer to feeling his feet touch sand and water and being on the same planet as his father and Dean.

He would be that must closer to Dean. The thought carried Cas through some particularly difficult nights in those interim months.

When it neared the time for the ship to arrive that would carry Cas, Jody, and a selection of other crew members back home, Castiel went online and called Dean in one of those aforementioned accidental middle-of-the-night moments. Dean answered thankfully without waking Missouri or Sam, but not before he cursed Cas out a new one for calling at such an ungodly hour. He didn’t get much reception outside of school. Castiel, for his part, did not care in that moment. He was a little too bold sometimes.

“They might have found a way to cure me,” he had told Dean. For the record, Castiel had never lied to him, only omitted the fact that Dean was very likely the only person that knew he existed in a multi trillion dollar project a billion million miles away. “When I get cured, I’m coming to see you.”

“What? That’s… that’s great, but don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that they somehow found a cure for your, and I quote, ‘incurable disease, but are you sure? And how are you even gonna get here? No way they’ll let you fly,” Dean had been rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Oh, I will fly,” Castiel answered, hiding a grin. “But it’ll take a long time. I may not be on for a while because of it.” He didn’t specify the time, how it would take seven months of no communication as they travelled the distance. Dean didn’t need to be burdened with that, not when the next time they would speak it would be face to face.

“Watch it, Cas. You know I can’t do with more lying. If you’re coming, you’re coming.” Dean spoke with a voice full of painful memories. He and Sam had been in the system their entire lives, each time they moved ending because the foster parent only wanted to do it for of the money the state would send them. Social services would then come, realize Sam and Dean were  in fact _not_ being taken care of by the parent (Dean would be the one taking care of everything). Dean had grown up being lied to, a very real reason as to why he now does not like anyone in the world except for Sam. Well, and Cas, but more often than not Dean’s pretty sure Cas is just one of those new robots on the market that he’s seen people in his class talk about these days. Anyone can be fake on the internet.

“I’m coming, Dean, and when I do I’ll tell you everything.”

That had been the last conversation they had for a long, long time. Castiel boarded the ship that would send him to another world he never had the chance to know, but seven months waited between now and the moment he knew doctors would hound him once he touched ground. He was raised by scientists after all, a fact Jody never forgets to remind him of daily. 

“I’m coming home,” he spoke out to the stars. What would it feel like? What would he see? What was _on_ Earth? Where would his father be? What was Dean’s favorite place? 

“What’s you’re favorite thing about Earth?” He had asked every single scientist in the 16 years of his life. Every answer was different. Every answer was unique.

 _What is my favorite thing about Earth?_ He never thought he would ever be able to answer that question.

But in seven months, everything would be answered.

Seven. Long. Months


End file.
